Notes.
The text of this chapter handed down by the Turin papyrus and those which agree with it contains nothing very difficult for a translator, but on being compared with the older copies it is found to consist of a collection of small fragments of the older text put together without any regard to their original order or context. And about three-quarters of the old chapter are suppressed in the new recension.
The editors of the fine papyrus of Sutimes in their notes upon this chapter remark, that in the Turin text the sentences are in quite a different order from that of their papyrus, “On peut y voir,” they say, “l’effet de lectures et de transcriptions en rebours du sens, par des scribes ayant mal compris les éditions en colonnes rétrogrades.”
This is, curiously enough, the very fault of the papyrus of Sutimes itself, which is here wrong from beginning to end,[[98]] though probably derived from an excellent original. It begins with the “Isle of Corn and Barley,” and jumbles together quite incoherent sentences.
The oldest copy of the chapter yet discovered is that of the Tomb of Chā-em-hait, at Thebes, and by a strange fatality it has been published in such a form that in order to read it correctly, we must begin with what is printed as line 11 and finish with line 1. We have it also in a very incomplete condition. We miss the first eighteen lines contained in the papyrus of Nebseni and the last words of every line.
The papyrus of Nebseni is the only complete text we have, and here as well as elsewhere it is extremely incorrect. Some parts are so corrupt that a translation must necessarily be dependent upon conjectural emendations which can have no genuine claim upon the reader’s confidence. We must be content with waiting till better authorities are discovered.
The Gardens of Hotepit and Aarru are the Paradise, Elysian Fields and Islands of the Blessed of the Egyptian imagination.[[99]] They were supposed to be situated in the neighbourhood of the rising Sun, but certain features were apparently suggested by the islets of the Delta.
The usual meaning of the word Ḥotepit,
